


A Lifetime with You

by Lunatical



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bittersweet, Death from Old Age, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark at MIT, M/M, POV Alternating, Romantic Soulmates, Sad and Happy, This is just a brief MCU rewrite with a shit ton of rhodeytony in it, Time Skips, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 20:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20570357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunatical/pseuds/Lunatical
Summary: Tony doesn’t really believe in God, so he’s not sure who to thank for putting James Rhodes in his life.They’ve been best friends for a year now, and Tony has never loved someone as much as he loves this guy. Rhodey doesn’t mind his constant rambling, or his messiness, or his nerdy tendencies that he carefully hides from the world; quite the opposite, in fact.The two of them fit together like the cogs in a perfect machine. All of their edges line up.***Or, the story of Tony and Rhodey, from their first meeting to their last.(Day 1 of IronHusbands Week:Stranded / “You keep me going.”/ Beginnings & Endings + IronHusbands Bingo Square C4: Hurt/Comfort)





	A Lifetime with You

It begins like this.

James knocks on his new room’s door, because while he does have a key, he really doesn’t feel like walking in on his new roommate completely unannounced. He waits for a few seconds, but he can’t hear the sound of anyone rushing to open the door, so he has to assume that his roommate still hasn’t moved in.

He reaches for his key. It’s a bit of a struggle, what with trying to hold up three bags with one hand, but he’s managing just fine when someone clears his throat behind him.

“So… I think you’re my new roommate.”

James freezes and slowly turns around, curious and excited to see who he’s going to be living with for the rest of the year. His eyes search behind him for the source of the voice, until they fall on a kid who doesn’t look a day older than fifteen, staring up at him with a wide grin on his face.

“Hi. I’m Tony.”

And that’s the beginning of the wildest ride of James’ life.

\---

Tony doesn’t really believe in God, so he’s not sure who to thank for James Rhodes in his life.

They’ve been best friends for a year now, and Tony has never loved someone as much as he loves this guy. Rhodey doesn’t mind his constant rambling, or his messiness, or his nerdy tendencies that he carefully hides from the world; quite the opposite, in fact.

The two of them fit together like the cogs in a perfect machine; all of their edges line up. Where Tony is frantic, Rhodey is calm. Where Rhodey is hesitant, Tony is eager.

It’s not like he believes in a greater power or anything like that, but it’s a bit hard to look at Rhodey sometimes and see anything but his soulmate.

That’s not to say they’re not childish and stupid at times, though.

Rhodey dared Tony to jump into a pond at the mini-golf course. They’re there on one of their “platonic dates”, as Tony has taken to calling them in the privacy of his own head. Meaning that he wishes they were dates because he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend, but Rhodey doesn’t love him like that so Tony settles for strictly platonic hangouts with no touching below the waist.

Of course Tony jumps in the pond. And when they’re running from security, Tony drenched and slipping everywhere and Rhodey laughing so hard he can barely breathe, Tony can’t imagine a life without Rhodey by his side.

\---

Leaving for the military is rough.

James has dreamed of joining the Air Force ever since he was a kid, and he gave all he could in order to finally reach that goal. Of course, that was before he met Tony; before the two of them fell in love.

They’ve been dating for a few years now, but they’ve kept it a secret. James can’t afford to be a queer man, not with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell still hanging over his head, and not if he hopes to become a high-ranking officer.

Tony understands. All he’s ever wanted was for James to succeed, and Tony would never ask him to give up his dreams for him. But it’s tough.

They barely see each other these days. Tony has his company, and James has his missions, and they try their best, but sometimes they only manage a call every other week, and they see each other in person maybe twice a year. James has to live with the knowledge that Tony’s hanging out with the hottest and most famous people in the world, and he couldn’t even blame him if he decided he’d had enough of waiting for James to come back.

Tony doesn’t. James’ tours are hard on them both, but they get through them.

Now, James finally has a two-months leave, and he can’t wait to get home. Tony can’t pick him up at the airport – he’s got a board meeting that he can’t skip – so he sends his driver over in a limo. James almost falls asleep on the way home.

Tony’s penthouse is silent and empty when James finally gets there. He’s so jetlagged and tired that he can barely stand, so he drops his bags in the hallway and makes a beeline for his bed.  _ Their _ bed.

He’s ready to faceplant onto the mattress when he notices something on the pillow. It takes some effort to drag his feet over to the other side of the bed, but he manages it.

It’s a note. He unfolds it.

_ Hello, Honeybear. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there when you landed. I know you’ll be dead on your feet when you get home, so I left you something nice under the bed. Open it before passing out, please. <3 _

_ Xoxo – The love of your life. _

James can feel the stupid smile he has on his face, but no one is there to see it, so he doesn’t care. He carefully folds the note before reaching under the bed. God, Tony is the best boyfriend.

He finds a shoebox under the bed, and he sits down to open it. Inside, he finds a Gatorade, a few cereal bars, a pack of wet wipes with a sticky note on them reading “ _ If you stink when I get in bed with you, you’re not getting any <3 _ ”, and the softest pair of pajamas James has ever seen in his life.

He sits there for a while, suddenly not feeling as tired anymore, and wonders when the two of them turned into a cheesy, old married couple.

And… oh, isn’t that an idea.

\---

Afghanistan is brutal.

More days than not, Tony wishes he had died in that first explosion. It’s a horrible thought, and one that makes him feel guiltier than he likes to admit, but it’s true. Every day is more painful than the previous one, and he’s just… tired.

There are only two things that really keep him going: revenge and hope. He wants to see these fuckers die, each and every last one of them, and he wants to be the one behind the trigger.

And he has to find out if Rhodey is still alive. He has to be. Tony doesn’t know what he’ll do if Rhodey…

The Ten Rings took away his dog tags during the surgery where Yinsen saved his life. They haven’t given them back, nor have they returned the ring which was hanging on the chain. Tony doesn’t know if they realize what it is, what it  _ means _ , but they haven’t asked and he’s not keen on pointing it out to them.

The reactor feels heavy in his chest. Where he usually finds the soothing weight of the dog tags, he now feels nothing but pain.

They took everything away from him. He’ll make them pay for it.

\---

For three months, James can’t fucking breathe.

Tony’s absence feels like a knife through his heart, sending pain shooting through his body with every heartbeat, every breath. He barely eats, he can’t sleep, all his waking hours are spent trying to find Tony.

He has to be alive. James refuses to believe he’s not.

He knows what the other officers are saying. That he’s compromised, that he’s leading them on a wild goose chase, that Tony has to be long dead, that James is losing his mind.

He doesn’t care. Fuck them. Fuck the military, and fuck his career, and fuck all the soldiers who speculate about why he’s so shaken by the loss of his friend. He knows some of them suspect that Tony wasn’t just a friend.  _ Isn’t _ . Isn’t a friend, present tense, because Tony’s not dead.

When James is on that helicopter, and he spots that tiny dot in a desert of sand, he feels like he’s the one about to die.

When Tony is in his arms again, he can finally breathe out.

\---

Tony’s life gets a bit hectic after that.

Obadiah Stane betrays him, and that hurts; he almost dies again, but that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing; Rhodey still looks at him like he’s going to disappear at any moment, and  _ that _ feels awful.

He survives. He becomes Iron Man.

He almost dies  _ again _ , and he pushes Rhodey away when he realizes that the palladium is poisoning him and that there’s no hope for him. Then Nicholas Fury turns up, and Tony manages to save the day  _ and _ himself one more time.

Rhodey never leaves him, despite how hard Tony tries. 

Tony’s edges are all bent and broken, and he doesn’t want to ruin the other half of the machine. It’s a weak metaphor, but his love for literature has died a long time ago.

The only thing that matters is that Rhodey never leaves him. He buys Tony a new ring, and gives him another set of dog tags, and spends countless nights holding him so tightly that Tony’s ribs ache the next morning. It’s not soft, and it’s not perfect, and they’ve long since lost that innocence they both had when they first fell in love, but they still fit.

The machine still works as perfectly as ever.

\---

James doesn’t know what to think of the Avengers.

They’re there at the Tower, and they seem like good people – they  _ are _ superheroes, after all – but they don’t seem to work well with Tony. Not that he can blame them, but he can’t help but be worried. He doesn’t think he’s stopped worrying about Tony in approximately thirty years, and he doesn’t think he’ll get to start now.

Not when Tony does things like calling James to say goodbye and  _ flying a goddamn nuke into space _ .

James calls his mother afterwards, and cries for the first time in decades. Roberta offers to come over and shake some sense into his husband, and James laughs and thanks her for the offer.

Things go back to normal for a while, after New York. He and Tony start to smooth things over, and it feels like they’re finally going to be ok, no ‘but’s, no footnotes, no clauses.

Sure, there’s one homicidal robot hellbent on destroying humanity, and there are a couple of close calls for them both, but they manage to save the day. Like always.

And then, Steve Rogers finds the Winter Soldier.

\---

The Civil War, as the media had called it, is a complete and utter disaster.

Tony can’t catch a goddamn break. There’s the SHRA. The whole thing with Barnes and the Captain. T’Chaka’s death.

Rhodey’s fall.

Tony doesn’t think he’ll get that memory out of his head for a long time. Seeing his soulmate plummet to the ground. Not being able to catch him. Rhodey being unresponsive, Friday barely able to find any vitals.

He thought he’d lost him, and it would have been his fault.

But Rhodey survived. He broke his back, he’s partially paralyzed, and he might never be able to fight or fly again… but he survived.

Tony builds him a pair of robotic legs, and he’s there for every physio appointment, holding him up when he falters. He’s there when Rhodey can’t do anything but shake and scream and cry, desperately clutching at Tony, and it kills something in him every time.

He’s no stranger to guilt, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for this.

He thinks that Natasha might suspect something, but Tony hasn’t told her. None of the Avengers know. DADT was repealed years ago, and gay marriage is legal nowadays. They were married long before they made it legally official, but that’s no one’s business but theirs.

They still haven’t told anyone, and Tony is honestly ok with that. The others wouldn’t understand what he and Rhodey have, anyways.

\---

As to be expected, their lives don’t get easier.

The world almost ends, and then it really does end. Half of humanity dies, Tony is lost in space, James feels more helpless than he’s ever felt before.

Tony comes back. They try to move on, with half the world gone.

Then, they find a solution. Tony invents time travel, and James goes to space. They save the world and bring everyone back. Thanos is defeated, for real this time.

Tony almost dies again, ready to give his life for the rest of humanity, and James is still not used to it.

He survives, and they both retire after that. They’re well into their fifties now, and the time for being superheroes has long passed. They’re just two men in a tin can: there are gods now, and mutants, and aliens, and people so powerful they could change the universe with a snap of their fingers.

They buy a house in the countryside, far away from the noise of the city. Tony buys an alpaca and names him Gerald, and James can’t even bring himself to be annoyed. They spend their days together, and they get to do what they never managed to before: live with each other, happily and freely, without having to worry about the next fight.

It’s liberating.

They still haven’t officially announced that they’re together – and have been for almost forty years now, isn’t that a trip – but everyone who matters knows at this point. There’s only so much platonic affection you can justify before you admit that their matching rings aren’t just a friendship bracelet kind of deal.

James doesn’t think he’s ever been happier.

\---

Tony never knew he wanted to build a family, but the universe seemed to throw kids his way with worrying frequency.

There’s Harley Keener, the first one of Tony’s adopted  _ sciencelings _ , as Rhodey calls them. Then there’s Peter Parker, who becomes a better superhero than Tony could have ever imagined. Princess Shuri doesn’t need him to mentor her, but she’s smart and sassy and a teenager, so Tony can’t help but consider her one of his. There’s a girl named Riri Williams who builds an Iron Man suit all on her own, and that’s probably the moment Tony realizes he has a legacy now.

At the end of the day, he and Rhodey are getting old now. Their joints hurt in the mornings and getting up from the couch is harder than it ought to be. But they are happy, and that’s all that matters.

Tony had known that his party days, the arc reactor, the trauma for the infinity stones, and the other hundreds of brushes with death would shorten his life expectancy. He’s in his seventies now, and he’s had one of the most fulfilling lives he could have ever hoped for.

When he has a heart attack, the medics manage to bring him back, almost by miracle. He’s bedridden at the hospital, and he knows there’s not much left he has to give. Death can only let him escape so many times, and he’s had more than enough second chances. All he wants is to die surrounded by the people he loves.

There’s a knock at the door, and Rhodey walks in with a bouquet of roses.

“Hi,” he says with a grin, “I think I’m your new roommate.”

\---

Tony dies a week later, going peacefully in his sleep.

All the people he loved are around him when it happens, and Rhodey strokes his hair until he finally stops breathing. The atmosphere isn’t as sad as he’d expected – it is solemn, yes, but there’s more love than sorrow in the air.

They know Tony was happy, and they knew this was coming.

James kisses his forehead one last time and leaves the room. He accepts the condolences with a smile, but he can’t bring himself to muster up much more than that.

He goes home, and immediately hates the emptiness and the silence, but he doesn’t leave again. He has a feeling he won’t need to.

Their friends come over to check on him and help him organize the funeral. There’s going to be a big one for the media and the rest of the world, to celebrate the life of Iron Man, but James also wants something just for the few friends they have.

The funeral feels more like a celebration rather than a mourning, and James finds that he likes that. Tony would have wanted it that way.

Things go back to normal. James spends his time working around the house, despite how hard it is to walk, these days. Sometimes he gets a call from the New Avengers, and they ask for his help with this or that strategy. He helps where he can, and spends the rest of his days enjoying the quiet.

He wakes up one day and sees Tony at the edge of his bed. He’s wearing that cute outfit he wore on their first date, when they were eighteen and carefree, and his brown hair is a mess of curls on his forehead.

He grins when he sees Rhodey watching him. He extends his hand, almost bouncing in excitement.

“Come on, Honeybear! I gotta show you something!”

James smiles and grabs his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! I hope you liked this.
> 
> Many thanks to [@betheflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame) for being an awesome beta. You can find me on tumblr [@lunaticalwriter](http://lunaticalwriter.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated!


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